


a priori

by tanyart



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 04:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9475112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanyart/pseuds/tanyart
Summary: Gabriel and Reaper have a chat.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [06seconds_left](https://archiveofourown.org/users/06seconds_left/pseuds/06seconds_left) in the [selfcestfest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/selfcestfest) collection. 



> **Prompt:** The degree of hatred you can feel for the world, and the person you are now (the person you have become). [...] Let's just say things are not looking good.

* * *

 

 

This is wrong, Gabriel thinks.   _This is wrong_.

He crouches down in the dim corner, back to the wall, gun in his free hand.  His stolen tablet is on the floor, projecting screen after screen of news articles of things that have yet to happen. The bright projections illuminate the abandoned office, reflecting dimly off dusty cold tiles and striped walls. He runs a risk of being discovered like this, but maybe, just maybe, he no longer cares.

_Let him see me._

Gabriel sweeps his finger through the air, dragging the floating screens from him. His palm splays out, over an image of Overwatch’s Swiss headquarters in fiery ruins.  Mentions of Blackwatch pepper the article underneath, his name, his agents, and his mind goes numb.

He means to collect as much information as he can while in the future, but it becomes apparent that too much has changed.  He cannot keep up, but Gabriel’s eyes are glued to the screens and he can’t stop going through blackened report after report.  The words start to blur together, facts and irrevocable proof tumbling in a precarious spill.  He catches bits and pieces of what is to come for him, and for the world.

When Reaper finally finds him, Gabriel sits back against the wall and gives him a leveled stare.  He resolves to not be shakened by any of it, not yet.  Not until he gets answers.  His gun lifts up, pointing to the ceiling, and he gently sets it down on the floor.  He wonders if his future counterpart remembers how to be _civil_.

“Start talking,” Gabriel says, and it's hard not to sound disgusted.

Reaper regards the tablet and its projections with a tilt of his head.  The broken chrono accelerator blinks rapidly in his hand, momentarily forgotten.  His mask gleams silvery white in the darkness, the stuff of childish nightmares turning very real.  He kneels down in front of Gabriel, the images of Overwatch’s burning headquarters running over his shoulders, his chest, his hidden face.  The video loops, playing it over and over, more unnerving than any nightmare.  

“What would you like to know?” Reaper asks, reaching for the screen.  He pushes it to the side, as if wanting Gabriel to see him more clearly.  The video freezes, stilling a frame of fire and ash.

He sounds so reasonable.  He sounds like someone who knows what he is doing, and has known exactly what he has been doing for years.  

Gabriel had expected an argument, a string of denials and excuses—an explanation shouted with a voice that thrums with anger and bitterness.  He expects to hear everything that has been playing in the back of his mind for months, every miserable thought that threatens to overwhelm him until he cracks.

Reaper waits.  The old newsfeeds scroll between them, articles that start to claw into Gabriel’s head and scratch at his nerves.  He thinks the questions should have started to bubble up by now, but everything seems irrelevant in the face of the future.

He wonders what had been the last straw, the last thread to snap and make him turn against Overwatch.  Gabriel is used to dealing with problems, used to preventing them or cleaning up after the fallout.  Some things are inevitable, and others are not, but everything has an origin.  

He doesn’t ask _why_. He knows why—he can _guess_ —he wants to know what pushed him over the edge.

Gabriel closes his eyes.  “Why didn’t anyone stop me?”  

Black smoke curls around him, heavy and cold.  Reaper laughs, spitting out spite with every breath. They have destroyed governments, assassinated world leaders, manipulated hundreds of nations.  It’s not a question of skill.

Gabriel rephrases his question.  “Why didn’t anyone _help_ me?”

He cannot make it any clearer, no matter how much he disagrees and fights with Overwatch, how unhappy he is.  He can’t believe no one, _not one single person_ , had seen how close he is to falling to pieces.  

“Do you think they cared?” Reaper murmurs, reaching towards him.  

Gabriel stills as Reaper tips his chin up, studying him.  He stares, hackles rising.  From under his mask, Reaper’s black eyes flash red, speckled swirls of shifting particles.  It’s inhuman.  Gabriel catches of glimpse of Reaper’s throat, covered by a black fabric, but the material shifts, revealing a sliver of graying skin.  There are pockmarks and scars, but the flesh stretches wrong, thinning until he can see a flash of white bone.

_This is wrong_.

Gabriel draws back, but Reaper’s talons hold him from moving away.

“Let me look at you.  It’s been a while,” Reaper says.  His gaze focuses on a scar across Gabriel’s face, just above the cheekbone, still fresh from a week ago.  He raises a claw to trace it.  “I remember this one.”

Gabriel takes Reaper’s wrist, pushing it away with deliberate force.  “Enough.  Don’t touch me.”

Reaper lets out a breathless laugh, but his hand drops.  “I remember that scar,” he repeats, like it’s significant.  He pauses, thoughtful, and finally says, “Do you know yet?  Can you guess? Six months from that scar, McCree will leave Blackwatch.”

The words hang in the air.  Gabriel tries to process it, tries to have it make sense.  He tries to be _rational_ , but there’s no stopping the quick thought that flits into his mind, makes the bile rise unexpectedly to his throat—that McCree had chosen to side with _Jack_.  

He goes breathless at the idea, after everything, everything he has _done_ —

The mask displaces itself, the dark gaps revealing how Reaper opens his maw, a parody of a smile.  He guesses exactly what Gabriel is thinking, and it makes Gabriel want to choke.

“Oh, _oh_. You’ve already started to lose faith in him.  I hadn’t realized how soon it started.  This explains a lot,” he says.  “No, he didn’t side with Jack.  He left, completely.  He didn’t side with anyone but himself.  He ran.  But that wasn’t what you were thinking, was it?”

Gabriel stares, trying to catch his breath, feeling guilty and feeling like he has been _caught_.  It makes him sick.

“Does that still make you angry? Does it make you hate them even more?” Reaper continues, curious, as if Gabriel is only an object to study from a distance and a completely separate entity.

“Why are you asking?” Gabriel says, and he doesn’t realize how his legs have drawn up and how he is pressing his back to the wall.  He is cornered.  From the tablet, a running list flashes _Gabriel Reyes: Dead_.   _Strike-Commander Morrison: Dead_.   _Ana Amari: Dead_.  “Everything I’m feeling, you have felt.”

Reaper turns the tablet off. The screens disappear, one by one, until there is only him with nothing to hide behind.  

“I’m telling you now,” Reaper says, calm, and Gabriel realizes what in Reaper’s tone and demeanor that is making him terrified, what is making him push against the wall, desperate to get away.  It's acceptance, unrepentant with himself and everything he has done. “It’ll only hurt more if you keep denying it.  You wanted someone to help? To see how much you hurt?  Well, I’m all we got.  I’m all _you’ve_ got.”

“It’s wrong,” Gabriel says, but it comes out empty and hollow, like ringing denial even to his ears.  

“When it happens,” Reaper says, ignoring him, “When you break— _don’t hold back_.  Make them see what they couldn’t before.”

Before Gabriel knows it, Reaper presses the chrono accelerator to his chest.  It burns white hot, flashing light shining through Reaper’s mask.  Fear thrums up Gabriel’s spine, ice cold grip seizing in his chest despite the heat.  He looks at Reaper and finally, _finally_ sees himself in all his anger and resentment and hate.  It feels like honesty and it feels like the truth.

For the first time, falling back into his time with fire burning inside his veins, he thinks—  

_This is right._


End file.
